The Moon’s Unique Orbit
(Article Credit AnswersInGenesis.org)
The moon has another unique feature that is often overlooked but just as important—its orbit around the sun. To appreciate its specialness requires some explanation.
Generally speaking, smaller satellites move in an elliptical orbit around their planets, a sort of stretched-out circle. However, all the major satellites, including the moon, have nearly circular orbits around their planets. As each satellite orbits the planet, it is also rotating around its own axis. Most satellites, including our moon, orbit their planets in the same direction that the planets rotate on their axes (with one exception among the major satellites, Neptune’s Triton).Here’s what is interesting. Most major satellites orbit on a plane that matches the planet’s rotation along its equator. (Again, Triton is an exception.) Many minor satellites orbit this way too, though some have extreme elliptical orbits with odd paths around their planet—some like Triton even revolve backward with respect to their planet’s rotation. The moon doesn’t fit any of these categories.
However, the moon orbits on a plane that nearly matches the plane of the earth’s revolution around the sun (see illustration below). No other satellite orbits in the same plane that its planet revolves around the sun. Not one out of 175.
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